David Fekete (p)

Julide Yildirim

European urban development trends have shown two directions in the field of metropolitan governance in recent years: (1) The governance of big cities has not been the exclusive responsibility of municipal self-governments for long, (2) The impacts and governance potential of big cities do not stop at their administrative borders. The focus of this paper is the governance practice of six big border cities in Hungary. The research questions are as follows: Are there formalised institutional frameworks for the governance of Hungarian big cities? Are there project cooperations that reinforce the governance activity of big border cities?
It can be said that in the building out of cross-border governance structures two of the six big cities examined do not show any activity on the basis of the defined indicators, while in one case the formal frameworks have been created, but without any real activity.
The survey proved that the EGTC membership chosen as the first indicator is only relevant for half of the big cities, and only two of them show any activity in real life (Pécs and Győr). Looking at the project-based cooperations, only three projects are implemented in border regions, and they are connected to two big cities (Győr and Szeged).

Dávid Sümeghy (p), Dalma Schmeller

David Fekete

Given the increasing role of cities in mitigating climate change, the role of urban climate governance is inevitable. Nowadays, cities' involvement in sustainability efforts is becoming increasingly important. Of particular importance are the horizontal networks and international initiatives that promote them and help the participating cities to exchange knowledge and experience. Participation in such initiatives and the degree of involvement is largely determined by the political leadership of cities. This paper investigates the political determinants of applying for a European sustainability award, the European Green Capital Award, using binary logistic regression with data on the real applicants and a control sample, up to the round of 2023 (for more than 250 cities). The results show that cities with a left-wing leadership and a higher share of Green Party representatives in the city council than the national average are more willing to apply for the award. Furthermore, the political context will also determine the outcome of a successful bid. Cities whose councils have a more favourable score on our environmental index are more likely to be finalists. Successful bids will also be influenced by the experience of previous applications and the innovation that comes with a change in political leadership. Moreover, as the European Green Capital Awards is a competition itself, the outcome of cities can be used to infer the success of sustainability policies in the political context indirectly.

Julide Yildirim (p), Nadir Öcal, Barış Alpaslan

Dávid Sümeghy

This paper assesses the determinants provincial public health expenditures for Turkey taking spatial dimension into account. A general-to-specific approach has been adopted where spatial variations in the relationships have been examined using the NUTS3 level provincial panel data for the time period 2009-2019. Descriptive spatial exploratory analysis indicates the existence of significant positive spatial association for provincial GDP per capita, health expenditures, and other explanatory variables, while the traditional East-West divide seems to persist with respect to income and health indicators. Empirical results indicate that there is positive spatial interaction with respect to provincial health expenditures supporting the expenditure externality hypothesis. In addition to spatial spillover effects, our results show the presence of strong path dependency, implying long-term policy stability. Urbanization and education level are important determinants of public health expenditures with significant spatial effects.